If he doesn’t already, South Dakota Gov. Mike
Rounds will soon have on his desk legislation that gives a pregnant
woman the option to look at a sonogram of her unborn child before she
has an abortion.
Opponents criticized the measure as onerous and
burdensome. Supporters make the commonsensical point that it helps
pregnant women—often in crisis situations—make a decision armed with all
the facts.
At the opposite end of the spectrum there is news
out of England that an artist committed suicide after she aborted twins
who were eight weeks old. Emma Beck left a note that read, “I should
never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum,”
according to the Telegraph.
Testimony at an inquest said that Beck, who hanged
herself in 2007, had split up with her boyfriend after he “"reacted
badly" to the pregnancy.
According to the account, through a series of
mishaps and vacations, Beck never saw a counselor in person prior to the
abortion.
“She saw her GP before the termination, but
missed an appointment at a hospital in Penzance,” the Telegraph
reported. “She then cancelled, but later turned up to an appointment at
a clinic at Royal Cornwall Hospital in Treliske. The counsellor was on
holiday so a doctor referred Miss Beck to a pregnancy counselling
telephone service eight days before carrying out the abortion when she
was eight weeks pregnant.”
After her
daughter’s death, Beck’s mother wrote the hospital, wanting to know why
Beck had not seen a counselor. The inquest heard Mrs. Beck say, “"She
was only going ahead with the abortion because her boyfriend did not
want the twins.” Mrs. Beck added, "I believe this is what led Emma to
take her own life - she could not live with what she had done."
The unidentified
abortionist told the inquest, "I am satisfied that everything was done
to make sure that Emma consented to the operation,” adding, "We have
since appointed more counsellors so there is more holiday cover."
The coroner, Dr. Emma Carlyon, recorded a verdict of
suicide, saying, "It is clear that a termination can have a profound
effect on a woman's life,” according to the Telegraph. “But I am
reassured by the evidence of the doctors here.”
In 2006 pro-cloning forces hoodwinked voters in
Missouri into unknowingly approving human cloning as part of “Amendment
2.” A group in the “Show Me” state—“Cures Without Cloning—then
introduced a proposal that would go on the ballot this November to
rectify this part of Amendment 2.
However, last October Secretary of
State Robin Carnahan wrote a summary of the ballot proposal in language
which Cures Without Cloning insisted was biased and inaccurate. Earlier
this week, Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce not
only agreed--ruling that Carnahan’s summary of the amendment was
‘insufficient and unfair”---but rewrote the measure in more accurate
terms.
As the Associated Press explained it, “The proposed ballot
measure would ban somatic-cell nuclear transfer, a procedure protected
under Amendment 2, and in which the nucleus of an unfertilized human egg
is replaced with the nucleus from another cell.” (Somatic-cell nuclear
transfer is, in fact, cloning, which proponents of Amendment 2 hid from
the public.)
The language in Judge Joyce’s revision asks the voters
whether the state should “change the definition of cloning and ban some
of the research as approved by voters in November 2006.”
According to the Associated Press, Joyce struck Carnahan’s
description that said the measure was “redefining the ban on human
cloning or attempted human cloning to criminalize and impose civil
penalties for some existing research, therapies and cures.” In its place
voters will be told the measure seeks a ban on “human cloning that is
conducted by creating a human embryo at any stage from the one-cell
stage onward.”
Part One
